Colombia joins China’s Belt and Road Initiative – Colombia News

Colombia formally joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in an attempt to decrease its dependence on the economy of the United States.

President Gustavo Petro announced the agreement after a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Petro said on social media platform X that “the history of our foreign relations changes” with the signing of the cooperation agreement.

The history of our foreign relations changes. From now on, Colombia relates with the whole world freely and on an equal footing.

President Gustavo Petro

According to the President’s Office, the historic agreement would allow Colombia to close its $14 billion trade deficit with China, which represents “practically the entire trade deficit” of the South American country.

Colombia’s “fiscal deficit would become practically zero and its capacity to pay its debt would increase by two,” said the president.

The agreement was opposed by the US Government, whose special envoy to Latin America last week suggested that American businesses could decide to buy Colombian products elsewhere in Latin America.

Colombia’s industrialist and trade associations that have historically been loyal to American commercial interests expressed their concern about the impact of improved trade relations with China on the national economy.

In a response, Petro said that he hoped “that the United States allows us to continue being partners on an equal footing” and claimed that Colombia’s cooperation with US counternarcotics efforts cost 200,000 lives in his country.

I hope that the United States will allow us to continue being partners on a one-on-one basis, because we have already put 200,000 Colombians to death trying to prevent cocaine from reaching their territory. Those 200,000 Colombians are worth a lot to Colombian society and the United States should have respect for those human lives and their families because we did it for them.

President Gustavo Petro

The rapprochement of Colombia, Brazil and Chile with China follows the decision of US President Donald Trump to impose 10% tariffs on imports from the rest of the world and growing tensions over the Trump’s administration overtly racist repression of migrants from Latin America.